A living willow tunnel where diagonal weaving provides a lot of inbuilt strength
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Garden Gurus – Glastonbury FM
What a fun ‘Garden Gurus’ team at Glastonbury FM! Tess came out to interview me on site planting trees in my new cider orchard, it was a very wild and windy day and one friend aptly describing it as ‘blowing a hooley’. Despite the hooley Tess managed to catch most of what I had to say about the subsoiling, the short…
Willow creatures – Yeovil
Yesterday I spent a lovely day in the inspiring art department of Preston School in Yeovil. Working with 30 pupils we made a range of insects and creatures during the course of the day, many dragonflies, jellyfish, a mole, hermit crab, ladybird…
Valentines Workshop – Shepton Mallet
To celebrate Valentines day, I organised a willow heart weaving workshop at The Art Tree in Shepton Mallet where I also exhibit my work. This was the first of a programme of workshops offered at the new gallery. It was a fun and relaxed evening with cake and bubbly and everyone made two woven hearts…
Pruning fruit trees
Shepton Mallet Horticultural Society were treated to me talking about the winter pruning of apple trees! A short presentation about “knowing your buds” and “understanding what is a good strong shape” was followed by an interactive session pruning two apple trees that I took in. Pub staff were entertained by us ‘crazy gardeners’ carrying apple…
Garden design / forest gardening – Bristol
A garden design for a collection useful and herbal plants. The site was more or less a blank canvas on a predominantly clay soil. This has been an interesting project involving the creation of shelter belts, drainage considerations and forest gardening principles.
Winter solstice lanterns – Shepton Mallet
During December I was involved in the organising of a lantern parade, this is the first year of the event in Shepton Mallet and it has been a huge success. We ran workshops in 3 local schools plus withthe scouts and three Saturday workshops in an empty shop in the centre of Shepton. Using willow and…
The first willow tunnel of the season – Wells
This is the season of living willow structures and despite the recent cold spell, the temperature has been rising over the last few days thus allowing all those with garden projects to make a bit of headway. Today I worked with a primary school to create a 3m living willow tunnel, 54 children took part and…
Planting the orchard – Shepton Mallet
I used to tell my students that even the most experienced gardener will not know everything, in our business there is always something new to learn. Our seasons are becoming increasingly unpredictable and right now the heavens seem to have forgotten that it is planting time and I didn’t check the weather forecast before collecting my 160…
New Art Gallery – Shepton Mallet
Myself and four other artists have opened a gallery in Shepton Mallet High Street, called The Art Tree, we exhibit paintings and willow artwork. The initial idea was the brainwave of Pauline Bereton who runs the Shepton Mallet Antiques shop. Initially the gallery was planned to be open until Christmas however due to interest it looks like…